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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
INTRODUCTION
Given the high price of oil, the vulnerability of the country to foreign
supply disruptions, and the priorities of the Reagan Administration, there has
been growing interest in developing the potential hydrocarbon reserves of the
U.S. continental shelf. OCS Lease Sale No. 56, the first off North Carolina,
was held in August of 1981. Forty-three tracts off the state were leased, for
a total of accepted high bids of $341 million. A re-offering of Sale 56
tracts, held in August 1982, resulted in the leasing of an additional six
tracts for $3.4 million. The next sale for North Carolina tracts will be No.
78, scheduled for July 1983. This will be the first of the new area-wide
lease sales in the southeast Atlantic and will include roughly twenty times as
much acreage as was offered in Sale 56.
If oil or gas is found off North Carolina in commercial quantities, it
must be transported to shore. If oil reserves of small size are found, given
the distance from shore, it is likely that the oil will be loaded into tankers
in the fields for direct shipment to existing refineries. Should considerable
amounts of oil be found, however, the companies involved will prefer to pipe
it to shore at a major port (Norfolk, Morehead City, or Wilmington), where it
would be loaded into tankers for shipment elsewhere. Natural gas, on the
other hand, can only be transported economically by pipeline. Any gas
pipeline from offshore North Carolina would almost certainly pass inland
through the state to feed into the Transco (Transcontinental Gas Pipe Line
Corp.) transmission lines running northeast through the Piedmont.
There are no hydrocarbon pipeline landfalls currently in the state and
very few major lines in any part of coastal North Carolina. As a result,
public resource managers and coastal residents have virtually no experience
with these types of facilities. Concern about the potential impacts of
pipelines, and particularly the need to examine routing issues early in field
development, led the state to fund this project through the Coastal Energy
Impact Program.
PROJECT OBJECTIVES
The study was designed to meet three basic objectives:
1) To identify and analyze the principal environmental and economic
impacts and the technical and legal variables involved in
constructing oil and gas pipelines;
2) To design strategies for preventing, reducing or ameliorating
potential losses of valuable coastal environmental and economic
resources; and
3) To provide the results of these analyses to state decision makers
and other interested parties in a comprehensive but readable
document
.
The report was written with two different scales of analysis in mind. At one
level, the report is intended to assist those making decisions at the
state-wide or coastal-zone-wide level regarding state policy towards OCS
pipelines. The second level is at the scale of a particular resource or

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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
INTRODUCTION
Given the high price of oil, the vulnerability of the country to foreign
supply disruptions, and the priorities of the Reagan Administration, there has
been growing interest in developing the potential hydrocarbon reserves of the
U.S. continental shelf. OCS Lease Sale No. 56, the first off North Carolina,
was held in August of 1981. Forty-three tracts off the state were leased, for
a total of accepted high bids of $341 million. A re-offering of Sale 56
tracts, held in August 1982, resulted in the leasing of an additional six
tracts for $3.4 million. The next sale for North Carolina tracts will be No.
78, scheduled for July 1983. This will be the first of the new area-wide
lease sales in the southeast Atlantic and will include roughly twenty times as
much acreage as was offered in Sale 56.
If oil or gas is found off North Carolina in commercial quantities, it
must be transported to shore. If oil reserves of small size are found, given
the distance from shore, it is likely that the oil will be loaded into tankers
in the fields for direct shipment to existing refineries. Should considerable
amounts of oil be found, however, the companies involved will prefer to pipe
it to shore at a major port (Norfolk, Morehead City, or Wilmington), where it
would be loaded into tankers for shipment elsewhere. Natural gas, on the
other hand, can only be transported economically by pipeline. Any gas
pipeline from offshore North Carolina would almost certainly pass inland
through the state to feed into the Transco (Transcontinental Gas Pipe Line
Corp.) transmission lines running northeast through the Piedmont.
There are no hydrocarbon pipeline landfalls currently in the state and
very few major lines in any part of coastal North Carolina. As a result,
public resource managers and coastal residents have virtually no experience
with these types of facilities. Concern about the potential impacts of
pipelines, and particularly the need to examine routing issues early in field
development, led the state to fund this project through the Coastal Energy
Impact Program.
PROJECT OBJECTIVES
The study was designed to meet three basic objectives:
1) To identify and analyze the principal environmental and economic
impacts and the technical and legal variables involved in
constructing oil and gas pipelines;
2) To design strategies for preventing, reducing or ameliorating
potential losses of valuable coastal environmental and economic
resources; and
3) To provide the results of these analyses to state decision makers
and other interested parties in a comprehensive but readable
document
.
The report was written with two different scales of analysis in mind. At one
level, the report is intended to assist those making decisions at the
state-wide or coastal-zone-wide level regarding state policy towards OCS
pipelines. The second level is at the scale of a particular resource or